What is a bounce vs time on site? According to Google.

Paul: Give me a Kleenex. I think it was kind of like that for energy drinks where everything was Red Bull, and I think now people have kind of accepted there are other —

Chris: Rockstar!

Paul: Yeah. But hey, you know Facebook, come on man. Listen, and this is just a general life rule, you know you should never have to put down somebody else to make yourself feel better. So if you feel threatened, hey come on.

Chris: Unless you’re in a rap battle because —

Paul: Oh, yeah.

Chris: I was rap battling in my head last night and I was killing it.

Chuck: Yeah. That was Boston, I think you said “Baltimore.”

Chris: Baltimore, oh yeah Boston, yeah.

Chuck: Yeah, a shoutout to Arnold. Man, I had a great time with you guys, I’d be glad to come back, just let me know. Well, they’re a cool company man. They’re doing some big things over there.

Chris: They’re do some big stuff huh?

Paul: I have something unless we’re going to jump in. I have something that I read this week. I learned something this week. Yes, I did.

Chris: Paul’s learning corner.

Paul: I did. We talked about time on-site and bounce several times, and I was corrected this week. I can tell you exactly what a bounce is and what a time on site is.

Chuck: Hold on, before you answer that, you mean what they are in reference to Google Analytics definition of them?

Paul: Yes.

Chuck: Okay.

Paul: I remember it was few podcasts where I always said, you know a bounce is when they go to your website and then they leave within X number of time. That’s actually not true. I was on a Google forum and I read this. Time on-site is related to a bounce but it doesn’t measure — it measures your timestamp. So time on-site is measured by the timestamp of your very first page view and then the timestamp of your very last page view, that is your time on-site.

Chuck: Yeah, for total.

Chris: Right.

Paul: A bounce measures the time — well, I guess a bounce is when they view one page on your site —

Chris: Right.

Paul: — regardless of how long they stay there even though —

Chris: So there’s no 30 second or 1 minute or whatever?

Paul: There’s no time limit. They can stay there for an hour. If they only visit one page, that’s a bounce.

Chris: So you guys watching this podcast right now, go ahead and visit another page so it’s not that long.

Paul: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Paul: Yeah. And I was like, “Wow! That changes a lot!” Now what happens is if you only visit one page, you don’t go to another page so there isn’t a timestamp.

Chris: There’s no timestamp, yeah.

Paul: So the time between timestamps is zero and that does get factored into your average time on-site. And when I read I was like, “Oh my gosh!” That kind changes things up a little bit.

Chuck: It changes everything.

Paul: It changes a lot of stuff.

Chuck: At this point, you know now I got to go research this.

Paul: Yeah.

Chuck: I have read a documentation where it says that you know the bounce rate is 30 seconds, and so at this point you know somebody visiting one page and then leaving maybe a good deal especially if the conversion happened on their page.

Paul: And even now, we build sites where they have forums on the homepage and we really try to get them very —

Chris: We want a high bounce rate actually, yeah.

Chuck: Yeah, if that’s the case then a high bounce rate —

Chris: And it makes sense because from Google Analytics’ perspective, they see the page retrieval, right? That’s when they’re analytics code gets run. If you go back, there’s no other entry. So you could stay there for 30 minutes and then leave, there’s no additional touch point for Google to say, “Hey another event occurred, they stayed on the site, they didn’t stay on the site.” They just assumed they left, you know even if that page is still up an hour, four hours, ten hours later if there has been no interaction.

Paul: I was like, “Wow!” Because I’ve always — I’ve read about the actual time being counted and I’ve read like five seconds. But when I really thought about it, I read this actually on a Google — one of Google’s forums, one of their moderators put that. And I was like, “Wow! Okay.” But the other stuff that I read was from just random other sites. And I was like, “This really makes sense.” So now when you’re doing your analytics and you’re thinking about, “Man, I have a really high bounce rate.” You know that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Chuck: Yeah, and they should not get in conversions.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: There you go.

Chuck: If your bounce rate is high and you’re not getting any sales or —

Paul: No phone calls, no form submissions.

Chris: Now we have got two kind of standard phrase about you know what owners think of their websites. We’ve never had an owner say, “I don’t care how few sales I get, I just want it to look really good.” They actually say, “I don’t care how ugly it is, I just want to get sales.”

Paul: Results.

Chris: And we’re never going to have anyone say, “I don’t care how few sales I get, I just want a high time on-site.” There’s just like, “I don’t care what the time on-site is. In fact make them all bounces, make them all zero time, just make them call.” And that’s what we focus on and we’ve actually talk about that specifically in a couple of podcasts. You know, you do all this work and this elegant design and you’ve got this 20-page website, maybe more and you’re desperate goal is to have them come to the website, call and go away.

Paul: Yeah, there you go. So it’s about results.

Chris: And the one note I was going to add to the Blank Stare News was, I was reading another article because Google took a financial $5 million hit —

Chuck: 500.

Chris: $500 million — yeah. $500 million hit in anticipation of fines from the Federal Government regarding illegal drug pushers basically.

Paul: Oh, yeah.

Chris: Prescription drugs that — yeah. Illegal pharmacies is probably the right way to put it. And at the end of the article said, “Interestingly this was not released by Facebook.”

Chris: All right! We’ve been at this a while, let’s just give a teaser. We’re going to talk a little bit about SEO versus social media, is there a best choice? And we’re just going to have to talk about that next time we’re —

Paul: Yes! There is a best choice.

Chris: There is a best choice.

Paul: End the podcast.

Chris: You guys have been listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes and that’s because of you. Thank you! We appreciate it. You know the enthusiasm that we get from our reviews, you know it causes us to read them and really we’re going to be high-fiving all day because some grandmother is listening to us. And you guys can do that too, just go to iTunes, create an account, submit a review and then hit us up either on Facebook or Twitter, let us know you put it out there and make sure you include some contact information so that we can give you an appropriate shoutout like Cathy, the grandmother, Thefrazzledhomemaker.com is her website.

Chuck: Yeah, shoutout to Aaron. Aaron I got you — e-mail or bounced back to me, I found it in my spam so I’m going to resend that to you. This was production guy I had a long of conversation with him, so yeah. Thanks for the review and check your e-mail later.

Paul: That’s what’s up.

Chris: Cool! You can send us an e-mail at podcast@e-webstyle.com, stalk us at Facebook.com/ewebstyle, Twitter.com/ewebstyle, Youtube.com/ewebstyle. And you can listen to this podcast at 9:15 Central Standard Time on Friday mornings. Just go to E-webstyle.com/seopodcast. Did I get everything?

Paul: And our website is Ewebstyle.com.

Chuck: Oh, yeah.

Paul: We never say that.

Chris: And we do websites, and we actually have a phone number, 713-592-6724, feel free to give us a call. We are still doing — remember now it’s possible that if you submit for a five point website analysis and you could actually be — your website could actually be included in our video podcast which we’re going to do right now so — oh yeah, and here’s the stickers that Dean Calhoun sent us.

Chuck: Open it up like at Christmas.

Paul: Oh, wow!

Chuck: The one with the QR code on it.

Paul: Man, I’m a nerd.

Chris: That’s cool.

Paul: I’m talking about a QR code.

Chris: That is cool.

Paul: That’s what’s up man. That is very cool.

Chris: If you guys are watching —

Paul: Yeah, I’m like, “Oh this is awesome!”

Chris: This is what we’re discussing now. Thanks Dean.

Chuck: We appreciate you Dean.

Paul: That’s what’s up.

Chris: You owe us 25 cents.

[Laughter]

Chuck: Yeah.

Paul: It’s very cool though.

Chris: We’ll send you an invoice. All right! Thank you guys for listening until —

Chuck: And tell him, a paper to bill you. That’s what I’m saying.

Chris: And we’ll see you on the next podcast, until then my name is Chris Burres.

Author: eweb-admin

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